


cold hands, warm tea

by civillove



Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-31
Updated: 2020-03-31
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:02:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23417914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/civillove/pseuds/civillove
Summary: a case of the week that involves drowning, sadism and malcolm not knowing the expression ‘cold hands, warm heart’.
Relationships: Malcolm Bright/Dani Powell
Comments: 26
Kudos: 162





	cold hands, warm tea

**Author's Note:**

> i was just really missing brightwell and i have zero excuses for any of this, it came to me when i was sleeping last night *shrug emoji*

Dani makes her way down to the morgue to see the latest victim that Edrisa has laid out on her metal slabs, dragging her sleeves down over her hands to keep her fingers warm in the frigid space. She knows they won’t be down here very long, just enough to hear cause of death details and get a better look at some of the information she found compared to the crime scene.

She didn’t grab her jacket but now she sort of wishes she had, the air conditioning seeping through the thin material of her shirt and sinking into her pores like ice water. She licks her lips, pulling the metal door open and holding it for Gil as he follows her inside—one of these days, she’ll get her poor circulation under control.

JT is leaning over the body but his gaze is fixated on Bright who is nearly vibrating as he talks about drowning and…what? She sticks her hands in her barely-there pockets and approaches the table, Gil taking the autopsy file from Edrisa.

“So what you’re saying is…” He raises an eyebrow, trying to get the profiler to concentrate.

Bright puts down his tea on the counter, “I think we’re dealing with a sadist who’s specifically into drowning his victims.”

Dani raises an eyebrow at him and Bright schools his face, catching the hint a little late that he shouldn’t be excited while talking about their killer. He gives her a small sheepish smile, rocking forward on the balls of his feet before clearing his throat.

“The killer is most likely male; he’s not using weights to hold a victim under water.” He motions to the bruises around the throat and chest of the victim, “These are from a firm grip. He likes to submerge the body and watch them struggle for their life.”

She feels a chill work its way down her spine that has nothing to do with the temperature in the room, “Her name was Chloe,” Dani mentions quietly, swallowing as Malcolm dips his chin a little and takes a step back from the body to pick up his tea.

He seems a little ashamed that he needs the reminder but nods his head, using her name this time when he talks about her, “Chloe was a fighter.”

Edrisa clears her throat, “Lung damage and a swollen throat are consistent with someone who’s drowned multiple times. Malcolm is right with his assumption that she fought, coughed up water more than once before the killer was able to subdue her.”

“More than an assumption,” Bright mumbles against the rim of his cup but then looks up at his team members, “Our killer isn’t done. He was clumsy with her but he has a taste for it now. There will be more drowning victims and probably not in their own homes.”

Dani straightens her back, her hand absently rubbing her forearm. “You think he’s gonna grow more confident?”

Bright looks across at her, his eyes washing over her form; she can tell he instantly notes the tension in her shoulders, the straight line of her back. He pulls his cup away from his face, reading her without asking, without trying very hard. She wonders what that’s like, not being able to switch the profiling off, to _seeing_ someone through their barriers with a simple glance.

It’s frustratingly unfair.

“I think there’s a dangerous possibility,” Bright says and definitely bites the inside of his cheek to prevent himself from saying something else.

Dani thinks she might know what it is because they don’t have much to go on; they can definitely dig into the background of the victim, spill over autopsy reports and analyze any video footage they can track down from the streets…but with a case like this, sometimes they don’t have enough evidence until another murder pops up.

She toes her boot into the ground, shifting in place as Gil splits them up to go over what they do have and her fingers dig into the soft flesh of her forearm. She hates how it feels like they’re biding their time.

JT moves to leave the morgue, Gil on his heels and as Edrisa wheels the body of Chloe into the other room, Malcolm takes a step closer to her and offers her his paper cup of tea. She lifts her chin and raises an eyebrow, watching steam slip out of the lid like cigarette smoke.

“You look like you could use it.”

She smiles softly and lets her hand wrap around the cup, fingers brushing his as they begin their walk back upstairs. He pulls his hand back suddenly as if she’s burned him and a laugh slips out of her chest before she takes a sip of his tea,

“Oh come on, now you’re just being dramatic.”

“Seriously, are your hands _always_ that cold?” He asks, pulling the door to the stairs open for her.

Dani shrugs her shoulder and plays with the rim of the lid, heat bringing a little feeling back to her fingers. “You know what they say about ‘cold hands’.” She quips and Bright scrunches his nose, confusion light in his blue eyes. Oh god, does he _really_ not know that saying?

“That they need a warm cup of tea?” He asks, for once not connecting the dots.

She grins, shaking her head but she can’t find it in herself to correct him, a little piece of his profile that she keeps to herself.

\--

Unfortunately, she’s on the right track that they don’t have enough evidence; not yet anyways. They spend hours going over the victim’s background, trying to make connections that aren’t clear yet, mapping out her life like they might be able to find something that sticks out compared to everything else.

Gil eventually sends them home for the night but Dani’s too wired to sleep and Malcolm outright refuses to leave. He’s got that look in his eyes like he’s hanging directly over the edge of _something_ and that if he reaches out in just the right way, he’ll find what he’s looking by grabbing onto a rope instead of tumbling down into a dark abyss.

She can’t force a case no better than he can force a profile into existence but he doesn’t exactly listen when told to go home and ‘sleep on it’ anyways. Dani picks up her coat, her eyes following the long lines of his back in his blue suit—she stumbles over words in her mouth, wanting to ask or tell him something that’ll get him to take a break but nothing seems like it’ll work.

“I’m heading out. You want coffee before I go?”

Malcolm turns and gives her a small smile, shaking his head. “Wouldn’t want that, I’ll be up all night.” He attempts to joke, like he won’t be up anyways.

She bites her tongue on telling him that isn’t funny, “Resting your eyes might actually help.”

He waves the comment off before sitting on the edge of the table, “You going home?”

“There’s a gym around the corner that I sometimes go to when I have unsettled energy, hopefully I’ll actually be tired after a long run.”

Bright hums and she can tell he’s doing that thing where he’s _looking_ instead of asking her questions, reading commentary between the curves of her skin and capturing unspoken words hanging in the air between them.

“I’ve never heard you talk about going to the gym before.”

And there it is, a disruption in her profile, a lost piece that he didn’t know was missing. “Usually I go to the diner down the street and eat a plate of pancakes when I can’t think but,” Dani shrugs her shoulder, half kidding, amusement on her tongue as she drags him through trying to decipher her language, “Seems a little late for that.”

He smiles, dipping his chin as he picks up the autopsy folder, “Okay, I get it. Minding my own business.” But there’s equal warmth in his voice as they vocally spar with one another and she can feel his eyes on her back when she turns to leave.

“Hey, one question,” He calls to her, making Dani turn at the doorframe. “Blueberry or chocolate chip?”

She smiles a little, tapping her fingers against the doorknob. “Chocolate chip, always.” And lets the door close after her.

\--

Dani stretches after an hour run, her bones feeling like jelly as she steps off the treadmill. She pulls her curls further back into her bun as they try to escape and picks a water up off the ground to take long, languid sips. Her lungs burn and her muscles hate her but her head feels clear as endorphins rush into her bloodstream. She’s not exactly a huge fan of the treadmill but staying in shape is important, even as a detective, there’s always that _one_ perp who thinks they can outrun someone when they yell ‘police’.

Besides, there’s something oddly therapeutic about getting her heartrate up, about hearing her blood pump in her ears, about pushing herself until she feels like she might buckle. Sometimes she runs until her hands shake, forcing one more minute, one more mile, harder and _faster_ until her legs can’t carry her.

She’d much rather run in the woods or a park or a place where it feels like she’s actually _going_ somewhere but finding the time is always the problem. Sometimes she trades in the gym for a diner; she wasn’t kidding when she told Bright that sometimes she’d rather sit with a plate of pancakes and pretend nothing else in the world matters than how perfectly the butter melts along with the syrup.

Dani pulls a towel from her gym bag and runs it over her face, making her way into the women’s locker room to clean up and head home. Her body is buzzing and kissed with sweat—she should probably shower but she doesn’t like the idea of stripping her workout clothes off until she’s home.

She bites down on her lower lip and puts her bag down on a bench near the lockers, glancing towards the showers. She could rinse off so she feels less gross putting her jacket on and call it a night, go home to shower and sink between her sheets for a few hours of sleep.

Taking her towel, she wanders into the showers and turns one on, letting her fingers run under the cool water slowly making itself warmer. She rubs her hand against the back of her neck and tilts her head when a loud clanking sounds from the back door of the locker room. She pauses, turning the water off so she can hear a little better.

“Hello?” She calls out, her voice bouncing off the walls. 

One of the things she likes about coming here at this hour is usually because she’s alone, a weird time for people who have normal work days to seek out the gym. Sometimes she runs into other cops, doctors or nurses, but most of the time she’s by herself. Dani takes a step out of the shower space and walks towards the bathrooms, glancing around corners and listening before she moves.

“Is anyone in here?” She asks but only the echo of her own voice replies, the hollow space making a shiver slide down the back of her arms.

Dani shakes her head, straightening her posture, getting ready to walk back to the lockers and grab her things to go home. She’s on a case currently, so she knows she’s probably just being paranoid, puzzle pieces of evidence and unfinished profiles swimming around in her mind. She runs a hand over her face and steps into the bathroom—

Only to see the body of a woman on the ground.

There’s a distinct moment where all her limbs freeze up and she just _stares_ before her training clicks into her brain. She rushes forward, kneeling next to the woman who’s in a bathing suit and checks her pulse. She was doing laps in the pool; did she faint? Fall and hit her head? Drown?

Her fingers are shaking against her neck, she’s not sure whether she feels a pulse or not. Her brain is filtering in common sense; the woman’s eyes are wide open, stuck in her last moments of life. Her skin is tinged blue and she’s cold to the touch. She steels herself, tilting her head back to give her mouth to mouth and starts chest compressions—just in case, she doesn’t want this to haunt her, the idea of not even trying too heavy a burden for her shoulders.

Another bang in the next room gets her attention, behind the back door that leads out to the gym pool. Dani swallows and glances down at the woman, grabbing her phone that’s in her leggings pocket. Her gun is too far away, if whoever did this is still in the pool area, going back to get it would mean that she could miss catching them.

She slides her phone out, her fingers dialing a number from memory.

Bright picks up on the third ring, “Dani?”

“Are you still at the precinct?” Her voice is clipped, soft as she moves towards the backdoor and opens it up, slowly and carefully.

“Yeah, I was just getting ready to leave. What’s wrong?” His voice is shrouded with concern, the type of warmth that pinches something directly in her chest that she can’t pay attention to right now.

She moves swiftly but tries to check all her blind spots down a long hallway that leads into the pool. “I’m at the gym, I found a body. Another woman; looks like she drowned. Tell me that’s a coincidence.”

Bright goes quiet for a moment but really, that says more than any of his words could. There’s shuffling on his end, quick movement, the patter of feet against linoleum, “I’m on my way, did you call Gil?”

“A little busy. The perp might still be here.” She whispers and opens the door to reveal the wide pool deck. She pauses, letting the metal weight close quietly and leans against it. Nothing jumps out of her, the humidity and scent of chlorine hitting into her like a wall; it threatens to crush her lungs as her heart beats wildly in her ears.

Dani takes a step forward, glancing around, taking in the surroundings all at once: there’s not a lot of things to hide behind, bleachers, the pools water lapping into the edges, the bright lights wavering up from under the depths. A few rows of supplies, kickboards and fins, a lifeguard chair and a white-board to write laps on. Another set of lockers is on the other side of the pool and a small thrill works its way into her stomach as she realizes that there’s not another exit.

There are only the entrances to the locker rooms and she doubts he was able to move quickly enough to escape through the men’s room as she traveled down the corridor from the bathrooms. 

“Please tell me you’re not doing what I think you’re doing.” Bright says after a moment, almost too loud in her ear and jolting her out of her concentration.

“I need to hang up, I’m checking the pool.” She warns, turning her head to look behind a row of life vests.

“Dani, you can’t pursue this guy alone. I’m almost there, we can look—”

“There’s no time,” She interrupts, “I heard him; he’s still in here somewhere.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of.” Malcolm mutters, mostly to himself but he stays on the line with her anyways despite the fact that she’s about to end the call.

She pauses when she comes to stand in front of the men’s locker room door, wondering if she should open it up to look inside or check behind the bleachers. Dani lets out a shallow breath, turning on her heel—

Only for someone to come up behind her and _shove._ It doesn’t take much, her sneakers slide on the wet floor and she crashes down, landing directly in the pool. She’s not underwater long, she knows how to swim, but it catches her off guard to the point where she’s not sure what direction is up and clamps down on the knee-jerk reaction to gasp. The moment her head breaches the surface, she feels hands grabs her shoulders and push her underwater again.

She struggles, hitting their forearms wildly but they’ve got her shirt in their grasp and at the awkward angle and with her in deep water, she can’t find the momentum to push him off. A whining noise leaves her throat and a panicked heat begins in the bottom of her stomach and her feet just manage to brush against the wall in front of her before—

The hands are gone.

Dani emerges to the surface, a choking cough leaving her lips as she struggles to find the edge of the pool.

“Dani!” Malcolm slides on the pool deck as he comes out of the men’s locker room, fumbling to his knees in front of her as he reaches to grab onto her arms. “Come on, I got you.” He helps pull her out of the pool, using his weight as leverage to haul her up and out.

She instantly bends at the waist beside him, coughing so hard that her eyesight pinpricks black.

“Easy, you’re okay.” His hand falls onto her back, gently rubbing up and down her spine. “Breathe slow and deep.”

She takes a stuttering breath into her lungs, trying to get herself to calm down and for her body to cooperate, her hand grounding itself by falling onto his knee and squeezing. She glances up and around the room but they’re alone.

\--

Dani sits on one of the bleachers, her eyes on the water in front of her as an EMT listens to her breathing. She pulls a towel back around her shoulders when they finish and grinds her fingers into the scratchy material. It’s hard for her to drag her gaze away from the pool, even when they tell her that she inhaled a little bit of water but she should be just fine.

She nods and draws her knees back a little closer to her chest, closing her eyes a moment to center herself. She can unravel at home, not here, not when Edrisa’s team is examining the body in the locker room and Gil and JT are talking to gym manager by the kickboards. She can still feel the exact moment where she thought she might not break the surface again, the water surrounding her in a vice-like grip, trying to pry her mouth open and slip into her lungs.

She shudders a little violently out of the thought, Bright coming up beside her and shrugging his peacoat off to place over her shoulders.

“You alright?” He whispers and she straightens her back, giving a soft nod because she doesn’t think she can handle piecing together words at the moment. The scent from his coat envelops her instantly, quelling the aftershock from her experience in the water.

She’s never coming to this damn gym again; a plate of pancakes never puts her in this situation.

She sighs, licking her lips, wondering if the smell of chlorine will ever fade from her hair as she looks up at him. “Thank you, for…you know, before.” She motions to the pool with her chin and Bright shakes his head, taking a seat next to her on the bleachers.

“You don’t need to thank me for anything.” He’s stimming his fingers on top of his legs as Gil and JT wander over, moving to put his hands in his pockets as if he doesn’t want them to see.

She clears her throat, trying to sit up a little so that she doesn’t look as water-logged as she feels.

“Did you get a good look at the guy?” Gil asks and Dani shakes her head, almost feeling guilty even though she knows its not her fault.

“No, he blindsided me. Are there cameras in here?”

JT makes a disgruntled noise, which just tells her no, “Nothin’ cause this space leads into the locker rooms. We got some of the other hallways but he was smart, hid his face when he knew there were cameras in the corners.”

She sighs, running a hand over her forehead. Her chest burns a little when she takes too deep a breath which reminds her of summers when she was a kid. Going to the Bronx pool with her father, him hoisting her up on his shoulders and dunking under the water when she least expected it—she always got chlorine in her mouth and up her nose, but it never seemed to bother her.

Her fingers curl against her collarbone a moment and she can tell Malcolm is watching her movements, always prying but not asking outloud.

“Your hair is lookin’ all kinds of crazy right now, Powell.” JT tries to joke and honestly, a calming laugh leaving her chest when she least expects it.

“Fuck off,” She mumbles which just makes Gil smile, moving to squeeze her shoulder.

There’s a relieved look in his eyes that she doesn’t want to unpack and she decides she needs to go home before the crushing weight of their concern makes her ribcage buckle in on itself. It’s not that she doesn’t care or appreciate it but she’s not a victim and she _hates_ the fact that this guy managed to slip through her fingers.

“I’m going to head home.” She says, standing from the bleachers, Bright following suit and stepping down onto the pool deck again.

“Let me take you.” He says, offering her a hand to steady herself but she leaves him hanging. Her knees feel like bowls of jello but she stands tall on them, not giving into a moment of weakness that feels heavy on her shoulders.

“It’s fine, I can manage.” Dani insists and manipulates the towel off her shoulders to leave behind. Malcolm looks like he wants to argue but also understands he’s toeing the line of her patience and that she needs to depend solely on herself. “I’ll take the coat though, if you don’t mind.”

A small compromise; a soft smile tilts up the corners of his mouth before he nods. “I have two, don’t worry.”

She lets out a slow breath with a gentle teasing eyeroll, bundling the coat closer around her body. “Of course you do.” And makes her way towards the woman’s locker room to get the rest of her things.

\--

Dani usually doesn’t let get cases under her skin; she knows that at the end of the day that nothing is personal. She can’t take things home, can’t let victims keep her up at night or she’ll never be able to get out of bed the next morning. She’s dealt with a lot of gruesome cases and her ability to empathize is something she always thought would make her a great cop, and it does, but sometimes its exactly what makes her feel paralyzed by evidence.

There’s a body in the woods and even as she’s crunching through wet and muddy ground, she knows that something is wrong. She might not be a profiler but she can sense there’s a shift in her partner’s shoulders, the way Gil turns his head to look at her when she approaches.

Malcolm is standing close by, his hands in his pockets, purposely _not_ looking at her and listening to Edrisa chatter through what they’ve found instead. She stops in her tracks when her eyes fall upon a broken body of a woman, her gaze cold and misted over like branches through a fog as she stares back _up_ at her.

She’s bruised and cut up from the riverbank, skin pale and tinted the softest of blues and Dani feels an overwhelming wave of nausea grip her body as she notices something almost instantly: it’s like looking into a mirror.

The shape of her face, the swell of her lips, the woman’s eyes matching her own and there are wild brown curls that would have been beautiful in any other setting. Her breath catches in her throat, the damp cold around her sinking through the material of her leather jacket and chilling her to the bone.

 _No,_ she whispers to herself over and over even though the looks of those around her confirm what she’s thinking in her head.

“Time of death?” She asks, isn’t sure what else to say. She has to break the tension, the silence that she feels choking her from the inside out.

Edrisa clears her throat, taking Malcolm’s hand when he offers to pull her up from the riverbank and onto the mud. “Little after four in the morning.”

“He’s accelerating,” Bright says, his breath fogging gently into the air. “The woman in the gym was roughly six hours before this.”

“Is there any good news?” JT presses, taking a step over a broken tree branch to look down at the body.

Malcolm is quiet for a few moments, his gaze trying to encourage her own into looking at him but she can’t do it. She can’t meet the steady pull of his eyes because she knows what they offer; comfort, understanding, a blue calm that Dani can’t afford to be dragged into. Not right now.

“His pleasure is peaking; he’s found something to satisfy the urges he feels but his problem is that he can’t make the sensation last.”

“So he’s going to kill again.” Gil fills in and Dani takes a step back out of the scene, wanting to turn and run until her lungs hurt, until her hands shake and she can’t see straight.

“Right, but it also means he’s getting sloppy. He’s not worried so much about getting caught versus the gratification that he’s after.”

Dani bites down on the inside of her cheek, “His victim pool has changed.” She presses, forcing Bright to say the words that are on the tip of his tongue.

He looks a little thrown off balance, which is strange given how at home he is to profiling others. This is the easy part for him, the words printed on the victim’s skin as if detailing their own story, their own murder. But he’s keeping something to himself, something that’s so obvious that it makes her want to scream.

“The last two females were blonde.”

The muscle in Malcolm’s jaw works and he glances up at Gil, as if he isn’t sure he wants to point out the obvious. He shifts on his feet and nods his head, “His fixation has shifted.”

Which is just a fancy, obscure way for him to comment on the fact that the victim looks like _her._ She shakes her head and backs up, turning to head back up the road to sit in her car and turn the heat on.

“Dani,” Gil calls after her but she waves over her shoulder, telling him that she just needs a few minutes to herself.

She makes the trek quickly, opening her car door and sitting inside before starting the engine. Dani lets out a slow breath that she feels like she’s been keeping in her lungs far too long, the action a little painful given what happened in the pool last night. She closes her eyes, resting her hands on the steering wheel and squeezing every so often until her knuckles turn white.

There’s a knock on the passenger door and she tilts her head to see it’s Bright, nodding her head to let him inside because she knows he won’t leave otherwise. He closes the door and leans back in the passenger seat, a soft sigh leaving his lips before he runs a hand through his gelled hair.

She’s not sure what he expects from her, what the point was of following her through the woods just to sit in her car silently but she’s not about to offer anything up. She wanted these few moments alone to get her head back on straight.

Malcolm licks his lips, head tilted down a little as his fingers draw into his palm. “I know what you’re thinking.”

That is not the right thing to say, “Oh, do you?” She nearly snaps and grinds her teeth together when she turns to look at him. “You know a lot of people do not find your inability to mind your own business endearing.”

He narrows his eyes, just a little, but allows her to be frustrated. The thing about Bright is that, despite his prying, he never tries to undervalue her emotions. He lets her feel things, lets them swallow her whole because he knows her, understands her process even though he doesn’t want her to blame herself for things she can’t control.

“You can’t try to rationalize a sadist’s motives.” Malcolm says carefully as if he wants her to understand every syllable that he’s telling her.

Dani feels a distinct prickling underneath her skin, “So we’re just going to ignore the fact that she looks like me?”

“It’s…more likely a coincidence than anything else.”

She doesn’t believe that and she knows neither does he. “You know, I gotta tell you. For as hard as you work to keep your own walls up—you’re not very good at lying.” He at least has the decency to look a bit sheepish. His chin dips and forces a strand of his hair loose so it bows over his forehead, “Stop trying to skew the profile because it’s me.”

“It’s,” He sighs, “I’m not saying that our killer doesn’t have a bit of neurosis; sadists _like_ honing their attention on specific pressure points—”

“And by that you mean violent acts that offer sexual gratification.”

Malcolm clears his throat, looking like he might regret getting into the car with her. “Usually,” He pauses, choosing his next set of words carefully, “But this has nothing to do with you.”

Dani laughs, shifting in her seat because _how_ can he not think that. “A woman is dead, Bright.”

“Which isn’t your fault.” His voice is firm, unmovable like a stone, his eyes boring into hers until she has to look away.

Her knuckles go white on the steering wheel again, forcing her gaze out of the windshield because it’s easier than looking at him. She tries to take slow breaths into her lungs but her chest feels weighted, like there’s cinder blocks resting in-between her ribs. She feels him shift beside her, his arm stretching out until it’s over her shoulders.

Her knee-jerk reaction is to push him away, to shove off his touch and to get out of the car but something buckles inside of her. Something crumbles away, her resolve maybe, but whatever it is she doesn’t try and reach for it again. Instead she melts into the touch, allowing him to pry her off the steering wheel and tug her into his side for a few moments where he _squeezes_ her shoulders.

Dani closes her eyes against the solid warmth of his body seeping into her skin, beginning to melt the frost that feels like its clinging to her bones.

\--

They manage to get an image from a video, it’s black and white, fuzzy screencap of their perp’s face as he hauls a body from his trunk near a hiking trail parking lot. They patchwork half views from the gym and cameras from the street where the first victim lived and run it through until they get a match: Andrew Collins.

He’s got a boatload of priors that include sexual assault, animal cruelty and involvement with a death of a female classmate in college but it was ruled ‘accidental’ and they never found any evidence to tie him to it.

On the surface, despite his criminal background, he looks like a normal New Yorker: handsome, apartment in Brooklyn, working to become a lawyer and picking up shifts at a bar near his place to pay the bills. He’s got a family cabin in upstate New York despite his parents moving to Florida a few years ago and—

“His wife divorced him,” Bright says after a moment, flipping through the paperwork in front of him and stands from the table to put a sheet on the white-board.

There’s a soft thrill working through his body as he addresses the rest of the team, something that’s familiar when the pieces start clicking together.

“Two weeks ago she filed a domestic dispute and began the paperwork, that’s the stressor.”

“What’s his wife look like?” JT asks and Dani leans up and over the table to grab another file, remembering reading about the domestic dispute description from a few hospital scans of broken bones.

She pulls a photograph of a woman out, pausing to turn it towards the others. “She’s a blonde.”

Gil takes the photo from her and adds it to the array of evidence on the white-board as she sits on the corner end of the table, picking up her mug of tea to take a long sip. She looks exactly like the first two victims and as she gazes up at Bright, she can see the wheels begin to spin in his head as he thinks. He draws his hand up to his lips, rubbing his thumb over the scruff on his jawline,

“I think we need to find the wife; she might be the endgame.”

JT hums, “Despite the fact that the last victim looked like—” He clears his throat, shrugging his shoulder. “Looked, uh, different.” He says instead and despite his last moment change of phrasing, he has a point.

Bright moves to lean against the window, crossing his arms over his chest. “His last victim was because Dani interrupted him,” He bites down on the inside of his cheek, considering his words for a moment that seem stuck underneath his tongue, “He didn’t get to…completely enjoy his time with the woman at the gym so he took his anger out on a woman who looked like Dani.”

JT makes a face but, luckily, doesn’t comment and Gil taps the file he’s holding on the table. There’s a thrill of a moment capturing the bottom of her stomach, something that signifies they’re close to finishing a case.

She can’t wait to _get_ this guy.

“So let’s track down the wife.”

\--

Gil sends her to pick up Andrew’s wife, who’s staying with a friend in lower Manhattan. Traffic is surprisingly on the light side as she drives, the sun dipping down behind the cityscape and creating a golden pink hue in the clouds.

She squeezes the steering wheel, glancing into her rearview mirror out of habit…and sees the same blue Chevy make a turn when she does. She frowns and flips her turn signal on, testing an inkling that’s giving her an unsettling sensation in the bottom of her stomach. She’s letting this case get to her in ways it usually doesn’t, slipping just under her skin and skittering to the point where she can’t ignore it.

The car turns after her.

She tries it one more time before she picks up her cell to call Gil, the line ringing a few times before his voice filters in through the speaker. “What’s going on Powell?”

“I got a car following me.” She details the make and model but then her voice trails off when the car turns at a red light, no longer tailing her. “Wait, it’s…” She sighs, leaning her head back a little when she pauses at a stop sign, three minutes away from the apartment the wife is staying at.

“It’s nothin’ boss, sorry.”

“You sure?”

Dani glances up again, checking the rearview mirror. There’s no one after her, paranoia starting to fizzle out as she takes a few deep breaths to ground herself. “Yeah, it’s fine. Thought I—”

The sentence remains unfinished as that same blue Chevy rams into the passenger side of her car at the cross street, successfully slamming her into the door, her head cracking off the window.

Her vision goes black and she’s suddenly cold.

\--

The next time she wakes up, the ground is swirling beneath her, a whirlpool of dark brown, black and moss green. A soft noise leaves her lips, her head pounding, blood warm and sticky on her forehead. It takes her a moment to get her bearings, to understand what’s going on—she’s moving despite her legs being stationary.

She manages to touch her head, a small explosion pounding into her temples as her fingers glide over a cut from…right, her car. Someone slammed into her car. Dani attempts to lean up but something won’t allow her too, a grip surrounding her legs and—

Then she realizes she’s being _carried,_ hauled over Andrew’s shoulders (it’s him, it _has_ to be him) like a sack of flour. His hand is firm around her thigh, touch bruising, her upper body hanging over his back as he talks to himself.

Something about isolation, something about how no one will be able to bother them. Dani attempts to look around, to force her gaze onto her surroundings to place where she is. She’s definitely in the woods, her leather jacket has been removed, her boots too and she’s just lucky that the rest of her clothes have remained in place.

Woods, isolation…she remembers that Andrew’s parents had a cabin in upstate New York—could that be where she is? In that backyard? Near a—her heart slams up into her throat as she hears running water.

A stream.

 _No,_ she attempts to move a little but her body feels incredibly heavy, like her limbs are made of steel. Then, they stop and Andrew heaves her forward until she lands onto the wet ground, the dead leaves and broken branches biting into her skin like they might attempt to devour her.

“Oh, someone’s awake.” Dani can’t see him smile but she can hear it in his voice.

She only has one shot at this and despite how tired she feels, how her arms and legs scream at her when she attempts to move—she has to, or she might not make it out of this alive. Dani grunts and throws her leg forward, catching Andrew by the ankle and successfully tripping him. His other foot lands into a soft spot of land and he wedges himself under a tree branch; she hears a cracking noise that she hopes is bone and a _wailing_ that is loud enough to break her eardrums.

She runs.

Dani sprints despite her socked feet getting stuck in the mud, regardless of tree branches cutting her skin and the fact that she can barely see a thing in front of her. She doesn’t have a choice, if she wants to live, she has to run—her gun and cell phone aren’t on her person, she has to find a road, get to the front of the cabin.

She runs up a hill and trips countless times, Andrew screaming after her, the sound of his boots hitting the ground crawling up her spine. She doesn’t stop even when her lungs burn, even when she’s breathing so heavy that she thinks she might choke on her tongue.

Through the branches she sees a flicker of lights, a _street,_ cars and flashing red and blue. Police. Dani stumbles forward but Andrew reaches her with a well-placed grab, yanking her hair so she falls back, a deep chested yelp leaving her lips at the sudden pain. Her team bursts through the enclosure, getting ready for a search with flashlights, she can hear dogs barking in the distance in case they couldn’t find her by looking.

Gil’s weapon is raised, JT on the side of him, a force of calm as he says, “Let her go Andrew, it’s over.”

Andrew merely pulls on her hair harder, tilting her chin back as she falls against his chest, successfully using her as a shield. “Nah, I don’t think I will. Kinda like the feeling of her body against mine, you know what I’m saying?”

She can feel all parts of his body despite her concentration, even though she shifts her hips and tries to pull forward and away from him. He’s breathing heatedly into her ear when he speaks; he’s turned on and she can _feel_ it, the uncontrolled sounds of discomfort that she makes when he pulls her hair only adding to it.

“You could kill detective Powell,” Bright’s voice filters into her ears even though she can’t see him, soft hesitation in his voice despite the words coming out of his mouth. “But it wouldn’t bring you any satisfaction. She’s just a surrogate.”

“Want to bet?” Andrew spits and Dani dips her chin just slightly, seeing Malcolm on Gil’s other side. He’s approaching slowly, hands raised to show that he has no weapon on him, his eyes only trained on her.

The blue is warm and calm; she trusts him even though fear is threatening to choke her windpipe.

“She’s not who you’re really angry with, she’s not the one who divorced you.”

Dani can feel his body go still underneath her, the profiler’s words settling over him like a thick blanket. He may not believe him but she’s learned that isn’t the trick with profiling…all Malcolm has to do is to get someone to listen.

Andrew scoffs but his grip on her as loosened significantly, “You’re not gonna let me go.”

“No,” Gil takes over, drawing Andrew’s attention off Bright, who steps closer to her. His gaze is consistent, his mouth wrapping around silent syllables that say ‘it’s okay’. “But we will bring her to you, let you tell her how you really feel.”

“Because that’s what you want isn’t it?” Malcolm presses, another step closer to Andrew that’s allowed. “For her to know what those women went through? That it was because of her?”

“But that’s only going to happen if you let detective Powell go,” Gil raises his gun, taking the safety off as if to make a point. “Otherwise this is only ending one way.”

The seconds where Andrew considers the proposal feels like a lifetime before his grip on her is gone. She stumbles forward, nearly losing her balance but Bright is there, catching her against his chest as JT and Gil put handcuffs on Andrew.

A shuddered breath leaves her chest as she attempts to stand on her own feet but her legs won’t allow her, Malcolm compensating for a lot of her weight to hold her upright. He doesn’t say anything but he draws her closer when she doesn’t step out of his grip. Usually she would reach down inside herself to find the energy to step aside, to continue her dredge through the mud to where the cars are to show anyone who’s looking that she’s not broken.

That she’s not scared or how close she was to becoming another victim against a riverbank. There’s an emotionless wall that Dani works so hard to put up inside herself, where she can still feel empathy but separate herself from what’s going on in a case; for concentration, for composure.

There’s a crack that she feels separating the brick before it tumbles down around her. It feels like her ribs are splitting in half and she doesn’t disentangle herself from Bright’s grasp. He hesitates, seeming to sense her struggling because instead of walking her out of the woods, he adjusts his arms around her to hold her more properly.

Dani buries her face in his shoulder, her hands digging into the fabric of his coat until her touch feels numb. She attempts to get her ragged breathing under control, relief flooding so suddenly through her bloodstream that she feels lightheaded. Bright drags his one hand up to cup the back of her head, gently slipping his fingers through the strands to remove dead leaves and twigs as the other massages circles into her spine.

He doesn’t move until she’s ready to face the others.

\--

She goes home after she’s checked out by a paramedic, she really has to stop making a habit of _that,_ and stays there for a few days. Gil doesn’t even have to tell her to stay put which is how she knows that this last case really got to her. JT gives her details on Andrew’s processing and she’s happy to hear that they never let him see his wife to tell her his side of the story; he doesn’t get to feel complete.

The thing with working as a cop and detective for so many years is that a complex begins to develop, a sense of being untouchable that she recognizes is dangerous and untrue. She knows that better that anyone as her eyes flicker to a photograph of her father on her nightstand.

Still, _fear_ is something she never really struggled with. Dani buried that emotion behind her wall and let flowers grow where it was planted, hoping that they never reached like ivy up and over the brick stature. It’s not that she refuses to feel the emotion, fear is something that can keep you alive, keep you striving to be better than the last case you closed…

But she also knows how paralyzing it is and was wary that if she let herself feel it, that she might not be able to stop.

So she takes a few days and spends it in her apartment, cleaning even though there’s really nothing to organize, making Thai food from scratch that’s a bit of a disaster and watching Netflix original movies that make her cry because it’s somehow cathartic.

She’s going back to work tomorrow and she’ll start building her wall up all over again, because that’s what she does—that’s how she moves on.

Dani turns and looks over her shoulder as there’s a knock on her door, a crinkling appearing between her eyebrows because she didn’t hear the buzzer. She pulls herself up off her couch and pauses the movie she’s letting settle as white-noise and looks through her peep hole—

“How did you get up here?” She asks as she opens the door, Bright on the other side in a soft gray sweater that makes his eyes look like the ocean on a brink of a storm.

“Snuck in with a pizza delivery guy,” He shrugs his one shoulder like she should be impressed but all she does is roll her eyes. There’s a bag of Styrofoam containers in his left hand and a paper cup in the other, “I figured you wouldn’t want to go to the diner you mentioned so I brought the diner to you.”

Dani takes a step out of her doorway to let him inside, her stomach rumbling at the idea of chocolate chip pancakes. “Thank you.” She takes the bag and cup from him as he shrugs off his coat, throwing it over nearest chair he encounters as they walk into the living room.

“How are you feeling?”

She sits down on the couch, setting the Styrofoam containers down and popping one open. She takes in a deep breath, the sweet scent of chocolate and pancake batter mixing with Malcolm’s cologne and something distinctly his skin in the most pleasant way that she doesn’t want to think about.

“Headache won’t go away.” He sits down next to her, his hand stimming a moment on his lap before he lifts to touch, brushing her hair aside as his thumb traces her temple. She does not shy away from his touch.

“That’s expected from a concussion. Should dissipate in a few days.”

She nods softly, dragging her teeth over her lower lip. “Definitely feel more like myself, on the bright side, less like a pile of mud.”

She turns until she’s sitting in the corner, facing him as his hand falls back onto his lap, watching her put the container on her knee as she folds one of her legs comfortably against the cushion. She pours too much syrup on the stack of pancakes and watches as he scrunches his nose in apparent displeasure.

“You don’t get to judge,” She motions at him with her tea, “But you can hand me a fork.”

Bright leans forward and picks up a plastic set resting on the coffee table, passing it into her other hand. He pauses at the brush of her fingers but instead of pulling away as he usually does, he turns his wrist so that he can squeeze her fingertips.

“I’m really starting to worry about your poor circulation.” He teases.

She laughs gently but doesn’t pull out from his touch, letting their hands rest together near her knee where she has pancakes sitting. “My dad always used to tell me that I belonged in some sort of warmer climate, near the beach.”

He smirks, his palm creating a place for her hand to sit and when the plasticware falls onto the couch, her fingers begin to lace in-between his own. His thumb brushes over her pulse point a few times, absently, the organic movement making her feel more at home than her own apartment.

“I _do_ know how you feel about the ocean, so, that’s not surprising to me.” He motions to her other hand that’s holding the cup of Earl Grey and she takes a sip, the liquid washing over her throat and warming her from the inside out. “Cold hands, warm tea.”

Dani shakes her head, putting the cup down so she can keep hold of his hand but start in on her pancakes. “You know that’s not how the saying goes, right?”

Bright tilts his head a little, his mouth opening and closing to nearly resemble a goldfish “There’s an actual saying?”

She smiles, squeezing his hand as she cuts a triangle of chocolate chip pancakes to shove into her mouth.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading! any kudos and comments are always appreciated xoxo


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